Scrolling Notification

Monday, 22 November 2010

Festivals fill our minds with happiness, hopes and
aspirations. Diwali, the festival of Lights is no different, but we put
in hardly any effort to understand the rationale behind it.

In Brihadaranyaka Upanishad, there is a verse that
enunciates the significance of Light: ‘Asato ma sadgamaya, Tamso ma
jyotirgamaya, Mrityor ma amritam gamaya...’. Contrary to this sagacious
adage, the current year is turning out to be a ‘Diwali of scams’! Look at
the instances of alleged plundering of public trust in broad daylight in the
Indian Premier League, 2G Spectrum, Commonwealth Games, Adarsh Housing Society,
Lavasa Hill city...

The Upanishad exhorts us to move away from Delusion
to Reality; from Darkness to Light; and from Death to Eternity. But to many, Delusion
is merely a Reality of opportunities, with the Light helping them loot and the
Darkness to hide it, and the greed instilling an elevated sense of Eternity
over other lesser mortals! What is sought is deliverance, not from ignorance
but the clutches of law. The chase is for money, power and possessions, not
knowledge, values or virtues.

Bess Myerson once said: The accomplice to the crime
of corruption is our own indifference.

Monday, 15 November 2010

My thoughts are not about marinated meat or microwave ovens. This may sound soothing to the vegans who abhor even milk, butter, and cheese.

Parents often tell their children about bees and birds, but they seldom talk about cows and elephants. Maybe, the thread that strings them together is invisible. Birds eat grains; Bees buzz for honey; Cows graze on grass; Elephants chew leaves. Most of us human beings however follow their carnivorous cousins. We prefer to devour flesh, mercifully not raw, but dressed, marinated and cooked.

I am not blogging about food or cooking; but about a few pounds of flesh called life, and a crazy oven called living. Both are controlled by a celestial power called destiny.

Destiny has a split personality! If it is kind, it can also be cruel; generous it may seem now, stingy a while later. However it is never ignorant or indifferent. Destiny is said to be a great leveler, a strict disciplinarian, always fair and just to everyone. Therefore, when you go up the ladders of your life, remember the time to come down is imminent! If you lose something, do not lose your heart with it; future has something else in store for you. Always take the stick willingly for, carrots may well be on the way!

Destiny gave me an opportunity to experience it all. How I got such a precious gift is as mysterious as the success formula behind a Hollywood box-office hit! Everyone likes success and yearns to recreate it. Experience however, stops me from joining that bandwagon. Once bitten, twice shy?

Oh! I forgot. The oven is still hot. The piece of meat called life is continuing to burn. Wait until I turn it over...

After
seven long years of construction, the building to which Mukesh Ambani, the
richest man in India and the fourth-richest in the world would move in with his
wife and three children is finally ready.
Built reportedly at a cost of `4500
crores, it is said to be the most luxurious residence of an individual anywhere
in the world.

From
‘up above the world so high’, I wonder what a view the sprawling slums of
Mumbai be offering?

There
are still many Whites who imagine that the colour of their skin lends them the licence
to be snobs. Falling in this category are two TV
anchors from New Zealand who recently demonstrated to the world how uncouth and
perverted they are!

One
of them ridiculed Sir Anand Satyanand, Governor General of New Zealand for
being obese and for his Indian descent: "... we don't expect Indians to be
begging on the streets of New Delhi, but it's like Anand discovered the buffet
table at 20 and never really left it".

Another
anchor, midway through a token suspension for his racist comments on the
Auckland born and bred Sir Anand, chose to mispronounce Delhi Chief Minister
Sheila Dikshit's name. When corrected, he
quipped: “’Dick
Shit’ is more ‘appropriate’ because she is an Indian”.

But
be nice to them, folks! As Desmond Tutu,
Noble Laureate and famed anti-apartheid campaigner said: ‘They need you to
rediscover their humanity’.